12 



With much show of reason he urges that his neighbor, 

 who will, at any time, kill a chicken for thirty cents' worth 

 of meat, ought not to object to his shooting a robin to save 

 three dollars' worth of fruit. The article closes with this 

 posing question, meant for that same poultry and meat-eating 

 neighbor. ** If he can kill a happy, playful, innocent, and 

 affectionate lamb, without injury to his moral nature, how 

 can it be so very wrong for me to shoot a pestiferous robin ?" 



While the greedy robin gives so much trouble to the hor- 

 ticulturist, the crow and the blackbird vex the righteous soul 

 of the hard-working farmer. In spite of strings, and flut- 

 tering shingles, and clacking wind-mills, and hideous scare- 

 crows — those fearless depredators invade the corn-field, and 

 pull up the young plants by thousands. Often have I heard 

 mild, good men speak with real bitterness of these marauders. 

 Indeed, I think the general feeling of boys and men has been, 

 and still is, that these black thieves deserve no mercy at all. 



And yet, from all that I have seen, heard, and read in 

 regard to it, I do not hesitate to express the opinion, that the 

 policy of destroying or of protecting birds, is a question of 

 far greater magnitude and importance, than men generally 

 attach to it. More than thirty years ago, at a Teachers' 

 meeting in this county, I had the pleasure of listening to a 

 lecture from a distinguished naturalist, whose early and un- 

 happy death science still deplores. It was from the lips 

 of the gifted William Oakes that I first learned to ap- 

 preciate the true functions and the inestimable value of the 

 feathered creation. With simple, unstudied eloquence, and 

 with the enthusiasm of a true student of nature, he dwelt on 

 the happiness of bird-life — the exquisite grace of form and 

 movement — the inimitable variety and beauty of their plu- 

 mage — their bodies filled, as it were, with oxygen, and per- 

 petually bathed in it — their motions so easy and so free — 

 and their whole being so full of enjoyment, that its ecstacy 

 was constantly and fitly gushing out, in those warbled melo- 

 dies which fill all the air, and charm every ear. 



